The following relates generally to e-commerce and, more particularly, relates to a system and method for providing a response to a search query.
Systems and methods for searching electronic product catalogs for the purpose of facilitating e-commerce are well known in the art. In this regard, many online merchants commonly provide search engines for assisting customers in locating items from an online catalog. For example, as described in the background section of U.S. Pat. No. 6,144,958, to perform a search using a search engine, a user submits a query containing one or more search terms. The query may also explicitly or implicitly identify a record field to be searched, such as a title, author, subject classification, model number, etc. of the item. A query server program of the search engine then processes the query to identify any items that match the query. The set of items identified by the query server program is referred to as the “query result,” and is commonly presented to the user as a list of the located items.
When the user of a search engine, however, enters a search term in an attempt to locate an item that is not within an electronic catalog, many search engines will simply return a null (empty) search result. The user frustration that arises from the presenting of null search results is a significant problem for online vendors. For example, null search results may lead to the loss of current and/or future sales by an online vendor.
In circumstances where an online vendor does not offer for sale an item a user is looking for, it is also known in the art to assist users in locating other vendors for the item of interest. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,785,671 describes a system that assists users in locating Web sites or Web pages from which a user-specified item may be purchased. To this end, the system utilizes a Web crawler program to retrieve Web pages which are evaluated, according to a set of content-based rules, to generate a score that indicates a likelihood that the Web page includes an offering for the user-specified item. The user may then be presented with a search result from which the user can navigate to those Web page(s) of vendor(s) that have been determined to likely include an offering for the user-specified item. It will be appreciated that redirecting sales to other vendors is also generally undesirable as it again may lead to the loss of current and/or future sales by an online vendor, e.g., the user may, in the future, proceed directly to the other vendor when desiring to purchase an item.